Thursday November 04, 2004

Charlie Strauss of Verified Voting New Mexico has has analyzed data from Florida (provided by Kathy Dopp from FL officials). Some interesting trends seem to appear… I’m not sure I fully understand this yet. Maybe someone with more time on their hands can examine this critically and post comments.:

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I don’t see how we can conclude anything from this data. There are so many confounding variables here: turnout rates (which could potentially vary by party, or by precint), undervote rates (which could also vary), and the like. It is hard to separate these from the accuracy of the recording method.

I’m not sure I understand the observation of “more variability on DREs than on optical scan". If I understand this correctly, it seems to be based on three “Democratic optical scan” and two “Republican optical scan” points. Perhaps the next thing to do would be to look carefully at those precints in detail.

The question raises the hypothesis that perhaps DRE machines tend to make voters more loyal. If this hypothesis were true, one would expect it to hold throughout the nation; that ought to be something that could be put to the test.

I think we have to be cautious how we interpret statistics. In general, there are two modes of statistical analysis: exploratory (where one searches for a hypothesis), and evaluation (where one tests a specific hypothesis). It is important not to confuse the two. At this point, this is clearly very much at the exploratory stage.

Average US turnout was 60%, I believe. That leaves lots of room for for this possibility: non-registered republicans show up, registered Democrats to not. This means the GOP is better at getting the vote out. If voting was 100%, or closer to it, it might be reasonable to talk about cross-overs and loyalty. Otherwise, that is entirely supposition.

Needed: Careful E-Voting Correlation Study
Tuesday’s election created lots of data about voting patterns in places that used different voting technologies. Various people have done exploratory data analysis, to see how jurisdictions that used e-voting might differ from those that did not. See, …

I have looked very hard at Kathy Dopp’s data. It’s called a “correlation without causation” in political science. Yes, there is a correlation. No, it is not caused by the op-scan machines themselves. It is caused by crossover voting by Dixiecrats who register as Democrats and vote for Republican presidents. This voting pattern has a long history in the South.

Counties with poorer residents with less education have not yet acquired the newer and more expensive E-touch machines. Poorer, less well-educated Democrats also crossover and vote for Republican presidents much more often than their wealthier, better educated party brethren who live in metropolitan and suburban areas. Those latter areas have acquired the new machines. The 2004 voting results mirror the ones in 2000 county-by-county. No big, sweeping changes.

Kathy Dopp’s analysis is worthless. What do you expect from a former high school math teacher who’s trying to play political scientist?

@ Mark B: While there may be merit to your argument that there were “No big, sweeping changes” in the 2004 voting results as compared to 2000, I feel that the ad Hominem attack on Kathy Dopp in the last paragraph was very much uncalled for. The source of an argument cannot invalidate the argument itself. You come to the conclusion that the analysis is worthless. Maybe you should leave it at that.